Posts Tagged ‘this is pointless but it made me smile’

First off, I must say it’s good to know we’re not the only ones with paint under our nails. 🙂

Of course this was for a worthier cause, a 9/11 Habitat service project in DC. But it made me smile.

As for what we’ve been doing lately on the house, well, school has begun once more and with both of us teaching like crazy we’ve slowed down as anticipated. If you recall my own embarrassing admission, it’s still true that I can’t stay focused on things if we have only one room we’re working on. I start to feel like I “have” to work on it and have no choice, and the levels of procrastinatory justification I immediately begin? They ain’t pretty. So we currenty have TWO count em TWO projects in the works:

Upstairs bedroom: While the summer was the big push, scraping the popcorn ceiling, mudding, sanding, priming, REpriming, painting and REpainting that room, we’re now trying to turn it into a reasonably comfortable second guest room by the time our holiday guests arrive. We purchased two twin beds (our other guest room has a queen) and are going to be piecing together the rest of what the room needs over the next few months. Considering all that is in there right now is two twin mattress sets on metal frames? It still needs a lot. Our cats, however, are pleased with the progress so far:

The second project — because there always needs to be a second project — is the foyer. As a reminder this is a smallish room but a biggish entryway, with wide doors on either side leading into the piano room on the left and the regular living room (TV, couches, etc) on the right.

Please note the partially-scraped popcorn ceiling. 🙂 For this picture, I am standing in the piano room (where the piano will someday be) looking across the foyer.

The foyer is definitely your first impression of the house — especially at night when we, like many people on this street, keep our door open and just the (locked) glass door closed. It’s wallpapered with an Asian-themed toile print in pink, and while it isn’t the paper I’d choose, it’s not bad enough to make me want to change it right now considering our other (uglier) priorities.

Since this is a matter of first impressions, I think it’s going to be a good room to have done. So we’ve been beginning to paint over the burgundy trim with first primer, then off-white trim paint. Here’s a before and after — or really, since it’s only primer on the trim in the second picture, a before-and-during:

Painting all the trim is suprisingly slow going — it turns out it’s harder when you have large areas you DON’T want to paint as well as large oddly-shaped areas you do. Also I learned VERY QUICKLY that putting masking tape, even very lightly pressed, onto the wallpaper was a bad idea (there is now a little mauve-tone gondolier man with half a head to back me up on this) but I think it’s going to look good someday. As for those pink radiators? I’m not even sure how to start.